Interested in this AI/ML Engineer role at Possible Finance?
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About This Role
Since our founding, we’ve delivered over $1 billion in funding to more than 1 million customers and saved them over $500 million. At Possible, we’re building a new kind of consumer finance company, one that helps people stay out of debt rather than profit from keeping them in it.
Team Introduction
Our Data Science and Data Engineering teams build the models that power how Possible extends credit responsibly — models that assess risk, detect fraud, and personalize outcomes for the people we serve. Today, though, the infrastructure behind those models — how features get built, how models get deployed, how we know when something's silently drifting — is maintained by the same people building the models themselves, layered on top of their core work. As Possible scales, that's becoming the bottleneck. We're looking for the person who takes ownership of that infrastructure long-term, so our data teams can focus on what they do best: building models that work.
The Role & Responsibilities
You'll be Possible's first dedicated owner of ML infrastructure — a green-field mandate with real autonomy to shape how we build, deploy, and monitor machine learning models going forward. In your first year, you'll design and roll out a shared feature store, giving our data teams a safe place to experiment with new features without ever touching production, and meaningfully improving how fast our models respond in real time. You'll bring visibility to a part of our systems that's currently a black box, standing up drift monitoring so we catch model degradation before it becomes a customer-facing problem. And you'll consolidate a patchwork of deployment tooling into one clean, reliable pipeline — covering not just the models we ship, but the ones we try and learn from along the way. This is a role for someone who takes ownership seriously: you'll start as a team of one, kickstarting the processes and standards Possible's ML function will run on for years, applying the same scientific rigor to your own infrastructure decisions that our data scientists apply to their models.
Requirements
- Deep, hands-on experience building and operating machine learning infrastructure — feature stores, model serving, and monitoring systems — in a production environment
- A track record of solving ambiguous, undefined problems: this role has no existing playbook at Possible, and you'll build one
- Strong proficiency in Python, AWS, and Databricks, with genuine engagement with the broader MLOps tooling landscape and the judgment to evaluate and choose the right tools for the job
- A demonstrated drive for results, holding yourself accountable to a high, concrete bar for your own work
- Comfort working cross-functionally with data scientists and engineers, bringing them along on new tooling rather than mandating it top-down
- A self-starter mindset — energized, not daunted, by being the first person in a role and building what it needs from scratch
What We Offer
This is a Hybrid position. We work in our centrally located downtown Seattle office three days a week (M, T, and Th).
The compensation range for this role is $187,440 to $202,350. We also offer significant stock options, comprehensive benefits, a bonus plan, commuter benefits, and excellent office space with complimentary drinks and food.
With the backing of our venture investors— Union Square Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Euclidean Capital, and Unlock Venture Partners — a dedicated following of hundreds of thousands of customers, and an extraordinary team, we are unwavering in our fight for financial fairness. As one of only a few FinTech Public Benefit Corporations, we’ve baked our dual dedication to building a profitable and socially impactful company into our charter; we only succeed when our customers do too. Give us a shout if you’d like to help us ship financial products that protect consumers from predatory lending practices and promote economic health.
Possible Finance is dedicated to financial fairness and community empowerment. We welcome diverse perspectives and experiences to help us achieve our mission of unlocking economic mobility for generations to come.
Learn more about us as a Public Benefit Company.
Salary Context
This $187K-$202K range is above the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $175K across 1356 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 8,943 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 75% of the market. At Possible Finance, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $212,000 based on 11,866 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $228,700. This role's midpoint ($194K) sits 8% below the category median. Disclosed range: $187K to $202K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($253,100) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $110,408; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $228,700; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,000.
Possible Finance AI Hiring
Possible Finance has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Seattle, WA, US. Compensation range: $202K - $202K.
Location Context
AI roles in Seattle pay a median of $226,100 across 973 tracked positions. That's 6% above the national median.
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 8,943 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 175 entry-level, 4,132 mid-level, 3,268 senior, and 1,368 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (521 positions). The remaining 8,351 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($253,100 median, 57 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 419 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 51 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 8,943 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,739), AI Product Manager (403), AI Software Engineer (402). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (175) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,132) and senior (3,268) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,368 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (521 positions), with 8,351 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,380. Top-quartile roles start at $264,148, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,310. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $253,100 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,422 postings), Aws (808 postings), Azure (638 postings), Rag (555 postings), Gcp (457 postings), Pytorch (433 postings), Claude (341 postings), Kubernetes (337 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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